Bone Dry

If I’m perfectly honest with myself, most AA meetings make me want to go out and drink.

I know the opposite effect is desired by Dr. Bob and his cohorts, but the forced obligation of having to go to a meeting makes me strongly desire a bone-dry Grey Goose martini with a twist faster than if I were allowed to go to a meeting of my own volition, versus having something hang over my head like say–oh, no television for a week or some such other repercussion.

It keeps raining in Florida.

The other day, my two alumni overlords contacted me inquiring how I was doing. They then seemed to push their agenda on me to “stay in Florida” a bit longer despite me cutting to the chase and once again re-iterating my homesickness.

What the hell is stopping me from going to Atlantic Avenue in my best little black Betsey Johnson dress and ordering said martini?

Very little, save for the fact that all of my belongings would be cast aside and my father might not pay for another “sojourn” of mine at the rehab clinic. Not to mention it would indefinitely prolong my stay in this swampy state.

A real Catch-22 as you might say.

I find it ironic that at the beginning of every AA meeting, they ask if “anyone has a burning desire”;

Don’t we all? Isn’t that the reason we’re all there?

And yet, there’s the irony that if you do bring up said burning desire, I imagine you’re whisked away to a windowless room where they pray over you (?) to make sure you don’t relapse.

I had an almost-sponsor once, when I told her I was craving a drink, she told me I must, “get on my knees and pray”;

?

As an atheist and an introvert, I chafe under these remonstrations. I chafe under this whole system and I’m incredibly homesick.

Truly, I’d much rather go down Atlantic Avenue right now for a Grey Goose martini, bone dry with a twist, than sit through a hollowed-out meeting where a bunch of strangers going on for an hour about a whole lot of arbitrary nothing is supposed to bring me “something”.